Daniel Lewis

A smiling person wearing glasses and a striped shirt.
Dibner Senior Curator for the History of Science & Technology
Department: Library, Curatorial Department (626-405-2203)
626-405-2206

Daniel Lewis is the Dibner Senior Curator for the History of Science and Technology at The Huntington, where he is responsible for the science and technology holdings from 1800 to the present. He has had postdoctoral appointments at Oxford University, the Smithsonian, and the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich. He has a faculty appointment at Caltech, where he teaches upper-division courses on environmental history and humanities. Lewis is the author of four books; the most recent is Twelve Trees: The Deep Roots of Our Future from Simon & Schuster. He currently serves as a commissioner for the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Species Survival Commission. He also won an Emmy in 2020 for his work as a producer on the KCET series Women in Aerospace.

Authored works include Star Struck: One Thousand Years of the Art and Science of Astronomy; Iron Horse Imperialism: The Southern Pacific of Mexico, 1880–1951; The Feathery Tribe; Belonging on an Island: Birds, Extinction, and Evolution in Hawai‘i; and Twelve Trees: The Deep Roots of Our Future.

Verso

Posted on Nov. 16, 2017
The Hooker 100-inch reflecting telescope, ca. 1940, side view with tube 40 degrees from horizontal. The chair of astronomer Edwin Hubble (1889–1953), on an elevating platform, is visible at left.…
Posted on Oct. 5, 2012
Kaua'i O'o (Moho braccatus), now extinct, and other Hawaiian songbirds, at the department of ornithology, American Museum of Natural History. Photo by Daniel Lewis. When I was working on my recent…

Frontiers

Posted on Mar. 26, 2024

The rings of bristlecone pines, the planet’s longest-living trees, chronicle past details about changes in the climate and other environmental variations of global significance. The Huntington’s Daniel Lewis explores this topic and more in his book “Twelve Trees: The Deep Roots of Our Future.”

Posted on Apr. 1, 2018

The last observations of a small Hawaiian birdIn Belonging on an Island: Birds, Extinction, and Evolution in Hawai‘i (Yale University Press, 2018), Daniel Lewis takes readers on a 1,000-year journey as he explores the Hawaiian Islands’ beautiful birds and a variety of topics...

Posted on Apr. 1, 2017

A massive crowdsourcing project is digitizing thousands of coded Union telegramsTo gain insights into the U.S. Civil War, The Huntington launched an innovative crowdsourcing project last year to transcribe and decipher a collection of telegrams

Posted on Mar. 24, 2016

The Huntington acquires the papers of an award-winning Hawaiian naturalistWhen it comes to the study of Hawaiian birds, few scientists can rival Sheila Conant, professor emerita and former chair of the zoology department at the University of Hawaii at Manoa